Spotify’s first original goes live

The music streamer's originals will all focus - naturally - on music, beginning with the animated doc series Deconstructed.

While there have been many promises, a few delays and several months of radio silence, Spotify’s first original series has finally gone live.

Deconstructed isa short-form, animated series that taps fans of music looking to learn a little more about their favorite genres. The series was created in collaboration with prodco Attn, which specializes in creating viral, shareable videos.

The first episode explores the history and politics of what is now known primarily as EDM (electronic dance music). It’s available now on both Spotify’s mobile platform and YouTube, both of which are ad-supported. Spotify hasn’t revealed how often new episodes will roll out.

The music streamer has a fuller slate of originals planned — all of which are centered around music, but none have dates attached at the moment. Other upcoming titles include:

Rush Hour, an unscripted series produced by All-Def Digital. Rush Hour will bring two hip-hop artists (one established, one new to the game) together and task them with creating a remix or mash-up of one of their well-known tracks, all in the time it takes to get from LAX to downtown Los Angeles during (you guessed it) rush hour;

Landmark, a docu-series that looks at important moments and movements within music history through interviews, archive footage and multimedia. Each episode will also be accompanied by an audio podcast;

Generations, a performance series featuring collaborations from two generations of hip-hop artists;

Singles, an in-studio series that documents artists as they record new takes on their biggest hit songs;

Life in Short, an anthology series consisting of 24 episodes, each dedicated to a single iconic artist;

Public Spaces, which will feature popular artists performing in a well-known public space, such as hip-hopper A$AP Rocky performing at the Brandenburg Gate;

Drawn and Recorded, which features three-to-five minute episodes, each focusing on a different iconic musician (including Elvis, Blind Willie Johnson and Louis Armstrong), narrated by Grammy and Oscar-winner T-Bone Burnett;

Flash Frame, an unscripted series centered around an A-list artist performing at Spotify’s New York City headquarters;

Trading Playlist, which will feature two celebrities discovering more about one another as they trade Spotify playlists for the day (produced by Collab and Ace Media); and

Focus On…, a performance series in which Spotify uses its data to identify a popular band in a key geographic area, and have them play an exclusive show for their “super-fans.”

CreatV Media founder Peter Csathy told StreamDailyin an earlier interview that mixing music and video content may not seem like a natural fit, but said YouTube and music-related content are naturally synergistic.

“YouTube is really where most music discovery occurs. It may primarily be a video service, but millennials use it for their music discovery, quickly looking up artists, sharing songs,” said Csathy.